DIVORCE

Birth. School. Job. Marriage... Divorce. The days when it was rare and shameful, almost a mark of perfidy or profound failure, are long gone. About one in three current British marriages is destined to end in a decree absolute. But that hardly lessens the pain. For many of us, no experience except bereavement compares

in terms of grief. For every amicable smooth parting there are many others which lead only to chaos and poverty. The average partner will lose 40 per cent of his

or her income after divorce. Lord MacKay's new bill, abolishing 'quickie' divorces but making couples undergo a year's mediation, is meant to help prevent the very worst of it. In this report by David Cohen, we hear the testimony of men and women either divorced or divorcing. Here are stories of new lives, old lives and half-lives. Illustration by Irene von Treskow. Portraits by James Cant

Jim Parton, now 36, a stockbroker turned author, married his girlfriend, a freelance television producer, in 1986, after she became pregnant. He "fell madly in love", but she was 21, "not really ready for nuptials" and "regretted it from the word go", he says. He thought that things would get better, but after five years, she moved out with their four-year-old son and filed for divorce.

Barefoot, laidback and cheerful, sporting large holes in both elbows of his cardigan, Jim shows me round the small house in Camberwell, south London, where the couple lived. Pictures of his ex-wife are still on the wall, but his shelf has lots of books with the words "divorce" in the title.

"I lost my job in the spring of '91, then my wife left in the autumn. Of the two, losing the wife was worse because I liked her. However badly you and your spouse are getting on, it's worse when they leave. All the banal things we used to do together - shopping, going for coffee - suddenly ceased. One of the things I liked about being married was being able to relax, to take my partner for granted; perhaps that's why she left.

"The first sheaf of legal documents that landed on my doormat accused me of unreasonable behaviour. It said that I'd 'raised my voice and shown no tenderness'; that I 'refused to discuss problems within the marriage'; that 'the respondent on occasion lost his temper with the petitioner, thereby causing her distress'. That was not how I saw the reality, but my lawyer said that the truth didn't matter, that it was merely a game, a formula for a quick divorce. It was all very confusing. But what was clear was that she was effectively dead. It was like suffering a bereavement, but worse, because in the case of divorce your ex has massive power to affect your future happiness.

"I was angry and wanted revenge. I looked round the house for something of hers to damage, but it was all gone. In her wardrobe there were 98 empty coat hangers. I manically counted every one of them, thinking that I'd never paid enough attention to what she wore, and, secondly, that this was where my money had gone.

"The court welfare officer - this complete stranger who, on the strength of a half-hour visit, decides the rest of your life - became a figure of hate for me. He discounted what I had to say about my involvement with our son, but took everything my wife had said very seriously. The fact that I was nice about my wife was taken to mean that I couldn't accept the separation. It weakened my position.

"My solicitor charged pounds 4,500 , but I lost custody of my son. My wife's first bill was for pounds 20,000. That cleaned her out financially. Another pounds 20,000 went on legal aid. Her solicitor was the most adversarial person I've ever met, and in the end I developed a greater animosity for her than I did for my wife. Her letters would ruin my entire day. One said my son was wetting his bed after contact visits, and came with a suggestion that my contact would be reduced if he didn't improve.

"We went our own ways on property. The house is worth roughly the same as the mortgage, so I kept it. I took one wardrobe, she took the other. The Child Support Agency was never mentioned because I don't earn much and I'd have been assessed at less than the pounds 300 a month child maintenance I currently pay.

"Four months after the separation, I had a fling with someone completely unsuitable. It was the best therapy because it was fun. I also took up rugby again, to burn off nervous energy - when you're married, a lot of male hobbies bite the dust. The singles' scene was a total culture shock - all those bewildering women in their thirties, too serious by far, all looking to marry. I went out with one who didn't like my wife's ghosts around the house. I take the view that the house is innocent. I haven't taken down my wife's photo because she's part of my past, and I have no wish to deny that.

"My only enduring sadness is not seeing my son when I want to. I can't stand the formal structure of once a fortnight and three hours on a Wednesday. It would be nice just to ring up and say, 'Do you want to come to the park?'. I'm convinced he would've been happier had we stayed together. A lot of guff is written about the effect of conflict on children. Our fights seemed to wash over him. Children have a harder time dealing with separation.

"Mediation, with its emphasis on positive communication, is a good thing. And if it takes work away from those solicitors, so much the better. Our divorce was finalised this year and we're lucky we emerged from it all still communicating. One thing I've learned: if you screw up your divorce, you screw up the rest of your life."

Julia Stanley met Tim at university, fell "insanely in love", and by 1968 was married. For 20 years, they were genuinely happy. They were good-looking and exceedingly rich, with thriving careers: Tim earned pounds 250,000 a year as an accountant, and Julia was a teacher. They also had two beautiful children, Laura and Sam. They were, says Julia, "the envy" of their friends. But, in the late Eighties, the wheels came off their marriage and, after four years of hostilities, they separated. The divorce went through in 1992.

Julia, 48, idles down "Millionaires Row" in Solihull, the expensive side of Birmingham, and stops outside a large Edwardian mansion. "Isn't it absolutely hideous!" she declares. Three years ago, this was her pounds 300,000 marital home. She has brought me here, she says, "to show the scale of adjustment" required by her divorce. These days, she avoids the neighbourhood she calls "Dallas", deriding it as "a place where women have big hair", but her subtext is this: some memories are still painful, and, more importantly, she has changed. Her new house, a mere three miles away, Victorian and bought for pounds 63,000, is, in fact, tastefully furnished, roomy and comfortable. She sits me down at a thick wooden table (it once graced the kitchen of her mansion) and recounts, as she puts it, "her journey to the brink and back again".

"Ours was a marriage cast in the hope and idealism of the Sixties and destroyed by the greed and hedonism of the Eighties," she says. "Tim worked 14 hours a day earning loads of bread, and we got into the habit of knocking back bottles of wine in the evening to relax.

"We had both been faithful but, towards the end, I began to suspect Tim of casual indiscretions. One night, when we were both full of Scotch, he tried to tell me how hard it was for him to get over this bloody secretary. I pursued him to the spare room, where he was flat-out on the bed, and brained him with a picture. We had to call an ambulance. Things had been tense for some time, worse than we acknowledged, and alcohol was our way of avoiding it. Six weeks later, I gave him an ultimatum: we cut out the booze, or the marriage is over. I hung in for a year, then went for a fault-based divorce - I needed to point the finger - and alleged adultery.

"I grasped early on that money would be the key to future happiness, and that I had to grab a whack of his pension. Tim originally offered pounds 10,000 a year, and my lawyer just said: 'We will maintain an Olympian silence until he makes a sensible offer'. I still had access to our joint account and was able to buy this house before he realised what I'd done.

"In the end, we met for a reasonably amicable lunch. We agreed that my settlement would comprise a capital sum of pounds 300,000 (half our total capital) and maintenance of pounds 20,000 a year for four years, index-linked - what I could have earned if my nerves weren't so shot that I no longer had it within me to become a deputy-head teacher. We sold the mansion and divided the chattels. I gave him the Waterford crystal and the oil paintings - I wanted shot of that entire way of life - and I remember sticking little labels on things, red for me, blue for him. There was one silk rug that we couldn't agree on. He took it to his house, I removed it to mine (I can't believe I did that!), and it went to and fro. He got it in the end, the bastard.

"I wanted to put an appropriate value on my services as a damn good wife for 24 years and not undersell myself, but I was also trying to demonstrate to the children and myself that there is more to life than money. Practically, it has meant that I don't need to remarry. I can choose men, but I don't need 'em." She says this very emphatically.

"The really hard part was doing without sex," she admits. "There is a danger that you can become promiscuous, particularly as swapping your wedding ring to your right hand is widely interpreted as 'I'm a divorcee - come and get me'. I joined a singles' club and looked for an instant replacement. I had to learn to relate to people deprived of my two main props: a rich, handsome man on one arm, and a glass of champagne in the other. I had to become less arrogant, and more appreciative of friendship. I dated actuaries, lawyers, the lot. It was murder, but important that I did it. I'm really proud that I didn't sleep with any of them, that I was celibate for two years. And when I was ready, I met this drop-dead-gorgeous guy and had a wonderful affair which only recently ended.

"For a few years, though, life was a daily struggle. My blackest moment was when I was standing on a bridge in France and I found myself thinking: how nice it would be to jump over. At that point - and how wrong I was - I thought there was no more pleasure ahead for me.

"I'm much stronger now. I've developed my strengths, learned what it is to be independent. And I like it. It's a new phase in my life. I have new friends, go horse riding, explore my options - I live quite a similar social life to my children."

Laura, now 23, wanders into the dining room. Earlier, Julia had spoken about how hard separation had been for the children, and how her son Sam, 21, hadn't slept properly for two years. So, while Julia was out walking the dogs, I asked Laura if she was pleased her parents got divorced?

"Yes, definitely. The last two years of their marriage was like living on a battlefield. Separation was hard, because we had torn loyalties, and Mum and I initially had a lot of conflict. But divorce was the right option because they're both happier and nicer people apart than they were together."

Laura leaves to visit her dad, who usually lives in Istanbul but is in Warwickshire with his new wife for the weekend. Julia flicks through a photo album, full of pictures showing Tim's lean, muscled torso. "Damn him!" she says, without a trace of bitterness. "He's still the sexiest man I've ever met."

John Mortleman, aged 69, a retired company director, is a veteran of two divorces. His cottage in the West Sussex countryside is cluttered with photographs of beaming children, toys piled high between the furniture, and hand-drawn pictures of dinosaurs. In the garden, there is a swing, a tree-house, two dens, skew goal posts and a trampoline. Everywhere you look, there is something to remind you of his children. But there are no pattering footsteps now. The children from his second marriage - two sons, aged 13 and 12, and a daughter, ten - live 250 miles away.

"I married at the age of 36 to a woman a decade older than me, who hit the menopause rather early. I put all my energy into my business and lived like a monk. She tolerated the long hours and I tolerated her absent libido. And, in between, we adopted two boys. After eight years, I remembered a part of my body that I hadn't been using and had an affair. She found out, was absolutely livid, and said we had to divorce.

"Our relationship had degenerated to a rather disagreeable partnership by then, but I wanted to soldier on and stay married for the sake of the children. My parents had never entertained divorce, no matter how bad their problems, and I grew up with the idea that marriage was forever. Our younger son - he was eight at the time - fought bitterly to stop the break-up: he would intercept letters from our solicitors and burn them. But by then it was the Seventies and there was this widespread dogma that it's better to divorce for the sake of the children.

"In the end, we sat around a table with our respective solicitors and sorted it out in 15 minutes. She got the house and the children, and I got the pounds 100 bill for legal fees. I was young, had a well-paid job, and thought I'd be able to rebuild my life.

"I met my second wife eight years later, through a dating agency. I was 55, financially successful, and looking for a serious relationship. She was 38, warm and sincere, and I fell hook, line and sinker. Seven months later we married in a registry office.

"I gradually came to see her as an extreme Women's Libber. Her preference for female company began to get to me. I felt rejected. There was always a lot of tension in the house, but I hardened myself to it. The way she put it was that she "no longer related to me", and she talked incessantly about splitting.

"On 22 March, 1990 (the day burns in my memory), while I was at work, she took the children and left. You cannot imagine what it was like to get back to an empty house. My mind was totally blown. I was very close to the children. She started divorce proceedings and, on legal advice, I cross-petitioned on grounds of desertion and applied for custody of the children. We came before a female judge, and my wife made a speech about women's rights and how 'no court will take away my children from me'. But the judge awarded interim custody to me."

However, at the final custody hearing, his wife did get the children, and, a short while later, took them up North.

"I felt like I'd been disembowelled, and I still do. The fight to get back my children, to see them regularly, even, has taken over my life. I am allowed to see them six times a year - they come and stay for half- term and for half the summer holidays - but I speak to them on the telephone about once a week. My wife cannot bear the sound of my voice. It's hard not to be bitter.

"The financial cost has been horrendous. I was worth more than pounds 200,000 when I retired five years ago, but that's all gone now: pounds 134,500 on solicitors' fees, pounds 1,275 maintenance a month for my wife and children. For the first time in my life, I'm in debt and unable to pay all my creditors. The capital part of the settlement has yet to be decided.

"I feel bitter towards my wife, but my main beef is against the legal system for making divorce so favourable to women. They go to court and they're absolutely assured of getting the children. I ought to be enjoying a comfortable retirement, watching my children grow up happily around me. But it's all ruined. I have been skinned by the system."

The new Divorce Bill favours mediation as the recommended rite of passage into what, for a projected 40 per cent of married couples, is the inevitable next "life stage". Unlike marriage counselling, where the focus is on saving the marriage, the purpose of mediation is to achieve an equitable, less adversarial and less expensive parting.

There are two main mediating bodies that, together, are forming a UK college for the training and supervision of mediators. National Family Mediation, a charitable trust launched in 1981, has 650 mediators operating out of 64 locations nationwide; Family Mediators Association, set up in 1986 with 350 mediators, are the main private providers.

Mary Kane, a family law solicitor, and Jacqueline Klarfeld, a marital counsellor, are members of the latter body. They charge pounds 240 for a 90- minute session (the present FMA model is that two mediators are always present). Mediation typically lasts six to eight sessions.

Barry and Linda meet in Jacqueline Klarfeld's lounge in north London. A couple in their mid-thirties, with an eight-year-old daughter, Sarah, they are getting divorced after 11 years of marriage. Barry is a computer sales manager earning pounds 42,000 a year, Linda a part-time beauty/nail technician. They heard about mediation through Barry's accountant and decided to try it because "Sarah's welfare is our first priority, and achieving an amiable split through compromise our second".

Barry, dark-haired, in a smart suit, seems relaxed; Linda, blonde, in denims and scuffed boots, more subdued. She sits opposite him across a low-slung coffee table, and avoids eye contact. Kane and Klarfeld perch on the couch in-between.

The main achievements of their sessions so far include: a more civilised handover of Sarah on weekends (at first Linda wouldn't let Barry in the house, nor would Barry enter); a mutual decision to sell the house and re-house Linda; and an opportunity to express their views on why they "grew apart and stopped communicating". No adultery is alleged but, since the break-up, both have new partners.

In this, their sixth session, ownership of the house and the microwave are on the agenda. They have just received an offer of pounds 237,500 for their house (after re-paying the mortgage of pounds 165,000, it would amount to a capital gain of pounds 62,000 after costs), which brings forward the crunch issue of re-housing Linda.

Kane: Linda, have you done anything about looking for a house?

Linda: Yup, I've had details through the post.

Kane: What price range?

Linda: About pounds 90,000 to pounds 100,000

Kane: Well Barry, you said in a previous session that the positive equity from the house - which I calculate at pounds 62,000 - would go to Linda. And that you would contribute something to her mortgage.

Barry: There is an awful lot of property in the pounds 60,000 to pounds 80,000 price range, some of it very pleasant.

Linda: You live there if you're so enthusiastic. I've been round to see them and they're awful.

Barry: Isn't there a certain bottom line here? I mean, can you explain why I should have to take out a mortgage for her as well as hand over all the equity? There just isn't the money for a pounds 100,000 property.

Linda: You say there's no money, but how come you're having two holidays this year?

Barry: I've told you... I won pounds 500 in vouchers at work and the holiday was covered by that.

Linda: All of it?

Barry: You want it verified? I'll show you the bill. And the other holiday is being funded from extra work outside normal hours.

Linda: It's easy for you to earn extra money.

Barry: Nothing is easy. This is difficult all the way round.

Klarfeld: Linda, what exactly did you mean by that?

Linda: I've got Sarah. I don't have time to earn extra money.

Kane: The income cake is not large. One way of making that cake larger, Linda, is for you to think about working.

Linda: I find it absolutely impossible to work at the moment.

Klarfeld: Maybe you need childcare.

Linda: I have no intention of letting anyone else look after Sarah.

Klarfeld: What about Barry? Could you get time off work?

Barry: Could do.

Linda: I cannot! Do not! Want to see it working like that! (She is angry and begins to cry.) Why should I hand her over to someone? I mean, yes, he's her father, but he didn't want anything to do with her before. It's easy for him to take time off now. I may as well just give her up, mightn't I? (There is a long silence. Linda wipes her tears, blows her nose.)

Kane: It is a terrible balancing act. But if mediation fails and you end up in front of a district judge, that judge is not going to say: "Well he can live in a shoe box and you can have the house on Bishops Avenue."

Klarfeld: Barry, what would be the maximum mortgage you could carry?

Barry: Some of the problems in our marriage arose because our mortgage was too high. I want it down to pounds 130,000

(Kane does a quick calculation on her calculator)

Kane: Well then! Presumably you're thinking of a place of about pounds 100,000 for yourself (Barry nods) Which leaves pounds 30,000 for Linda. And with pounds 62,000 equity from the sale of the house, that brings her to pounds 92,000. That puts the two of you in similar accommodation and seems to meet both your requirements.

Barry: I'm going to show my naivety. If Linda gets married within the year, do I get something back? Or have I lost everything?

Kane: You can build a payback into the agreement... (Moves to wrap up.) For homework, Barry, you work out the maximum you can spend on a mortgage. Next week we'll do a detailed budget.

Barry: We talked about the microwave a lot this week, didn't we! (Being facetious)

Kane: Put it top of the agenda for next.

Barry Don't worry, it's getting so late now, I mean...

Here comes the judge

A barrister handling big-money divorces speaks to Angela Lambert

"I had a client who was going back to America after his divorce settlement. He was determined to take six loo rolls with him because there were 12 in the house when the marriage broke down. They litigated for months over those six rolls.

"These things become representative of the hurt in the failure of the marriage and acquire a significance all their own, beyond common sense and reason."

We are talking in calm, comfortable legal chambers in the Temple. The speaker is a barrister specialising in family law and, in particular, divorce. "The reason why I do this job is that I'm good at people and I love it. Even after 25 years, I'm always fascinated by the multiple layers of reasons for breakdown."

What makes the divorces of the ultra-rich different from anyone else's? "The main difference is that the client comes to you much sooner. For example, a husband about to get a big redundancy pay-out will be anxious to place it abroad; the wife equally keen to make sure that he doesn't. Where the case should be heard can be crucial. In some American states, the starting-point is to assume that the marital assets will be divided half and half, although very few extremely wealthy husbands would be willing to concede that.

"We make a point of being as conciliatory as possible. A 'settlement in the marketplace', meaning a reasonable offer that is agreed without going to court, produces much higher figures than for those who go to court - not least because of the savings in legal costs, which can amount to pounds 50,000 for each side.

"If either party insists on fighting all the way, the first stage is 'full and frank disclosure'. You have a professional duty to ensure that you know everything relevant about the other side's finances, though, even then, many wives go on believing there's a 'crock of gold', and it's hard to convince them when it doesn't exist.

"A husband can resist this by what's called 'the millionaire's defence', whereby he says to the judge, 'I've got enough money to meet any reasonable order this court is going to impose'. If either side is being absolutely intransigent, then the other can take a view of what they are reasonably entitled to and put a so-called 'Calderbank offer' to the other side, which cannot be disclosed to the judge during the case. This has the effect of reducing costs, because it shows that that side was willing to make sensible concessions.

"A rich wife's budget is very different from yours or mine. If her lifestyle has always included a private aeroplane and day and night security guards, or a bottle of champagne opened every time the milkman knocks on the door, she will expect that to continue. There are cases where wives are just greedy. If she has the house, the Rolls, half the pictures and the silver and the children properly provided for. If she still refuses that, it starts to cost her an awful lot.

"Over18 months to two years, most clients mellow to the point where they will accept that this isn't about hurting the other party. I must say that when the wealthier party is the wife, they behave no better. Women are worse, if anything, than men." Women who win big

Maya Flick, 37, born Countess Maya Schoenburg-Glauchau, has rejected a settlement of pounds 9 million from her husband of12 years, Friedrich "Mick" Flick, the Mercedes-Benz heir, whose wealth is put at nearly pounds 500 million. She is claiming for:

pounds 12,000 Telephone calls pounds 6,500 Petrol pounds 5,000 Knick-knacks pounds 300,000 London pied-a-terre pounds 1.9 million Their nine-bedroom, Georgian mansion in Egham, Surrey (currently undergoing a pounds 750,000 refurbishment) pounds 750,000 Swiss chalet pounds 50,000 Furnishings for Swiss chalet pounds 5,000 Stocking a casual visitors' drinks tray pounds 4,000 Upkeep of Labrador pounds 300,000 Jewellery pounds 585,000 To furnish the country house pounds 50,000 Clothes pa pounds 12,000 Phone bills pa pounds 50,000 Holidays (with children) pa pounds 40,000 Travel (solo) pa pounds 50,000 To throw a party for 180 friends pounds 40 a time on candles. pounds 160,000 For top accountants to draw up "budget" papers - as guidance on the sort of money she needed. Katina Dart, 37, the divorced wife of billionaire Robert Dart, whose family firm makes polystyrene boxes for the fast food chain McDonalds, is currently disputing a settlement of at least pounds 9 million - the previous record amount awarded to MayaFlic k in October. She is fighting in the American courts for half his fortune, worth up to pounds 1 billion, having failed in Britain, where she and Dart have lived since 1993, to prevent her ex-husband's decree absolute. She now forfeits certain rightsto t he millions in his trust funds. Her lawyers hit out at the "timidity" of English courts. One, a solicitor named Margaret Bennett, said: "Divorce settlements in England have been based on a wife's needs, not on a fair division of property, as in the United States. This has led to 'the m illionaire's defence', where there is one law for the mega-rich men and another law for their wives and everyone else." Mrs Dart added: "Robert Dart is the ultimate shopaholic. He went on a shopping spree for a tax haven, two nationalities (citizenship i n Belize and Ireland), and a divorce forum." Patricia Kluge, 45, an erstwhile soft-porn model, married John Kluge, an American, in 1982 after divorcing Russel Gay, a British magazine publisher. She was 32, Kluge was 57. He is the third richest man in America worth $5.9 billion, having built a media and communications empire. Their divorce in 1991 left her a pounds 13 million yacht, the Mar estate near Balmoral (which he later took back and sold to the National Trust in Scotland), a mansion in Virginia set in 10,000 acres, a private helicopter and, reportedly, a trust fund of $1 billion.

Research by Sophia Chauchard-Stuart

A brief history of divorce

ad950 Under the laws of Hywell Dda, ruler of Wales, provision is made for property to be divided fairly between partners after divorce. 1533 Pope Clement VIII refuses to annul the marriage of Henry VIII to Catherine of Aragon so that he can marry Anne Boleyn 1534 The English parliament is compelled by Henry VIII to pass acts separating the English Church from Rome and make him its head. The principle of ecclesiastical divorce is established: there must be proof that the original marriage contract is invalid, meaning that in the eyes of the Church the marriage has never taken place. 1546 The first civil, as opposed to ecclesiastical, divorce, granted by a special act of Parliament in order to make lawful the bigamous marriage of Lady Sadleir of Standon in Hertfordshire. 1551 The first civil divorce on the grounds of adultery, granted to the Marquess of Northampton, and since described as "the first real inroad on the indissolubility of Christian matrimony". 1857 Divorce courts, established under the Matrimonial Causes Act, enable the middle classes to divorce in numbers. 1937 Matrimonial Causes Bill is passed in the House of Lords extending the grounds for both divorce and nullity proceedings, and prohibits divorce for three years after marriage, except in cases of special hardship. Grounds for divorce are: adultery, des ertion for three years, cruelty, incurable insanity of five years' standing, and unnatural offences by the husband. 1939 The British Privy Council accepts the Muslim practice of instant divorce, whereby a husband can divorce his wife by simply saying Talaq ("I divorce thee") three times in a row. 1949 Legal aid is introduced for divorcing couples, making divorce possible for all classes. 1969 The Divorce Reform Act, a major breakthrough in divorce legislation, takes away the issue of "guilt". Courts now have to be satisfied that the marriage has "irretrievably broken down". Thus ends the practice of husbands popping down to a Brighton ho tel with a prostitute and a camera to get proof in court of adultery. 1970 The first case of "palimony", a term credited to lawyer Marvin Mitchelson, whose client, Michelle Triola, unsuccessfully sued Hollywood star Lee Marvin for half of his property. 1989 Under the Children's Act, if a woman remarries, maintenance ceases to be paid to her but financial provision for the children must continue. 1993 A statistical high:165,000 British couples divorce, 350,000 get married. 1994 The Marriage Act allows civil weddings in any premises open to the public and approved by a local authority. 1995 Lord Mackay's White Paper removes the need to prove "fault" in a marriage, such as adultery, unreasonable behaviour or desertion, but compels couples to spend a year in mediation and encourages them to negotiate their own settlements, thus greatly r educing the role of lawyers.